Re: Auditory interface ideas, what would help?

From: "Alex Hall" <mehgcap@xxxxxxxxx>

To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:38:57 -0400

Agreed, but Visual Studio tries something like this, though not an audio
warning. I hate it, because I am always either being focused on a list of
suggestions or an error list, even if the error is from something wrong that I
had not finished typing yet; had I had more time than half a second, the text
would be correct and no error would be generated. An error tone may be good
when, for example, you go to the next line and forget to close a set of
parenthses; I guess it would be a "error on previous line" warning tone, and a
keystroke would read the error the tone was alerting you to. Just my thoughts,
and I have never used Net Beans.
Have a great day,
Alex
New email address: mehgcap@xxxxxxxxx
----- Original Message -----
From: Stanzel, Susan - Kansas City, MO
To: 'programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'
Sent: Friday, August 28, 2009 2:21 PM
Subject: RE: Auditory interface ideas, what would help?
Hi Listers,
When people are using Eclipse for editting Java, something on the screen
turns "red" when they type something wrong. I would like to know that.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Homme, James
Sent: Friday, August 28, 2009 1:01 PM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: Auditory interface ideas, what would help?
Hi,
If I knew how to get in touch with Will Pearson, I'd ask him these questions.
Maybe our moderator will be able to dig up his address.
From a usability viewpoint, I'd like to be able to have everything a toggle.
The user should be able to turn every single audio aspect of the system on and
off.
If this is only about writing Java code, I don't know how much useful
information you can get from the rest of this message, but I'll try to give you
some general ideas.
· I'd want a sound that indicates which part of the system the next
spoken message is coming from. For example, there'd be a sound that indicates
that the next spoken message is coming from the debugger, then a spoken message
from the debugger. There'd also be a training mode where the user could learn
what the sounds mean. The debugger sound would play along with the spoken word
debugger. Once the user got used to the sound that means debugger, the user
could turn off the training mode.
· All spoken prompts could have a short and a long version.
· There could be the option to send messages to your screen reader,
and another to make Netbeans speak messages with one of the voices already on
the computer.
That's all I can think of for now.
Thanks.
Jim
----------
Jim Homme
Usability Services
412-544-1810
james.homme@xxxxxxxxxxxx
"Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable
will." -- Mahatma Gandhi
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Andreas Stefik
Sent: Friday, August 28, 2009 12:37 PM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; Sodbeans
Subject: Auditory interface ideas, what would help?
Hello folks,
We're getting pretty close here in our netbeans tools, possibly within the
next few months, to adding some very nice auditory enhancements to NetBeans for
blind users. I've got an overwhelming number of ideas about what could help,
but I can't implement them all and would like to get some feedback from the
community. Specifically, we're looking for some ideas in two main areas, code
completion and auditory navigation.
1. Code completion --- Whenever I've talked to folks in the past about code
completion with audio, people have suggested that one of the most annoying
issues with code completion is changes in focus.
Anyone have ideas about auditory code completion? Besides managing focus
better, anyone have any ideas on how to make it more accessible?
2. Auditory navigation --- I have a graduate student currently working on a
blind code navigation system. Right now, the system allows you to jump around
the source window and find variable declarations, method declarations, and
other similar things, but we want to expand the navigation to make things
easier.
One idea I had, for example, was to make the navigation window "debugger
sensitive" so that if you are navigating around while your code is executing,
there will be audio that tells you more information about what you've browsed
to. For example, if you navigate and land on a variable, it might tell you its
name, type, and if the debugger is running, what its value is, or other
information, depending on how much useful audio we can put into a short cue.
But really, we're doing this project for this community. We genuinely want to
make our tools as accessible as humanly possible, and we're going out of our
way to make it so. If anyone has any ideas about what kind of tools would help
you, go ahead and put them here, I'd love to hear about them!
Obviously, we have limited development time, so it's unlikely we'll implement
every suggestion, but brainstorming helps.
Andreas Stefik, Ph.D.
Department of Computer Science
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
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